So this may sound more like a topic proposal for a graduate study dissertation than anything. As the title implies, I find that the suburban lifestyle to be more or less a crock. Follow me on this musing.
My girlfriend and I have been watching a lot of Desperate Housewives, (if you don't know the show, it's worth a gander) and seeing how the popular view of what classic suburbia is. Obviously the show is beyond dramatic, but the lifestyle the characters lead is more extravagent than anything. But they are upper middle class folk (supposedly) and that is how I can excuse a children's book author living in a house 5x the size of my apartment. With that being said, they are in fact still middle class. Why do I find that disturbing? Because it's boring, uneventful, blissfully hellish.
Here is the breakdown of class structure.
Basically, once you make over $10k to $200k, you are considered middle class. In other words, by American societal dogma, 85% of American citizens should live in the traditional suburban dream. It might be the communist, or the socialist, the rebel, the paranoid, or just the common sense of history within me speaking, but I don't trust these idealic little dreams concocted for people to strive for. So here is my rationale for feeling this way.
1) Historical precedence: Just looking historically at America, it has time and again tried to establish where the status quo should go. I will start as far back as post American Civil War. The poor people (wage slaves, social dependants, vagrants etc...) were flocking and encouraged to live in inner cities, to be closer to where "the action is." This had the effect of localising serious economic drains into one area, where they could all be equally forgotten (these ghettos still exist today, especially in D.C., NYC, and Chicago). This to me is the same as saying, "If you are a musician/actor/dancer the only way to make it big is to go to NYC." Which, if you play your cards right and with a little luck, you can make it work anywhere, but the gullible will attempt their luck, and a very few will succeed.
Next point in American history, expanding westward. This overlaps with post Civil War, but they also encouraged all working class individuals (which included: Doctors, Teachers, Blacksmiths, Carpenters, Farmers, Clothiers, Bankers...) to head west and strike it rich, being granted land rights and the promise of the fortunes of a new frontier. Of course this was bullshit, they just wanted to secure the entire continent from Russia is a major political ploy. The expansions was trecherous, empovershing, long, arduous, and like so many fads, rarely met the hype (though it did give popculture an excellent genre to work with).
During and after the world wars there was a push between Old Money vs. New Money. What this was was a battle of what was truly upper class, and a battle that only they were privy to. How it occured was due to technological innovation, the newfound stockmarkets, and various other reasons that people would come into newfound wealth. This clashed with the already wealthy, who inhearited their wealth the old fasioned way, their family. They never worked, so they had different moral and social ideas of how people with money were to act. Not surprising, this argument lead to the sharing of rich "neighborhoods" and creating new classes to explain those who were richer than middle class, but not quite a Rockafeller, a.k.a Upper Middle Class and Lower Upper Class. Even in the 40's these people made hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, a feat I can only dream of. They however, were not relocated or asked to move, merely the political sanctions these classes had were altered accordingly, which is basically: if you have lots of money, you probably have lots of connections; if you lack connections, you have money and angry neighbors.
After the world wars and during the cold war, the idea of Suburbia began to be realized, when square mileage of land was developed with cookie cutter housing in identical layouts to create a sense of homogeny and equality within the obviously wide-gapped middle class. This was also out of defense, keeping that diverse of a population in identical areas with identical housing with everyone copying the Jones' must have made it very difficult for Communist spies to garner any useful tactical information as to where local heads of communities and states were located. Not to mention the neighborhood bomb-shelter would have been much easier to afford than individual ones.
Then that is where we have stayed, the Cold War being dead now for over 20years, and no honest push away from this seemingly self imposed homogeny, which to me suggests something socially and politically.
2) Social Precedence: We all strive for the community we belong in. Whether it is economically (rich, poor, selfimposed poverty, wanderer...), clique (goth, punk, jock, prep...), jobs, marital status, common histories, we all desire to belong to a part of something as is inherent in human nature. So finding common grounds to live in makes perfect, natural sense. However, when you enter into a divergent group of populations within on socio-political boundary (such as cities, states, countries, counties...) you run into inherent differences between the people within said structure. So within structures we seek out further assimilation with "our" group, so now we seek out districts where we feel more around ourselves than before.
For example, you may enjoy the west, but live in a small town, but you know a larger city would just fit you better, so you move to someplace like Tucson or Austin or even Seattle if that fits you. Now however, you also notice that you can't live on the hill with the fanciest of houses/mansions, but you do enjoy the downtown "freethinking" feel. You now have moved in to a studio apartment in a surrounding downtown affordable highrise, surrounded by other slightly worse-for-wear artist types. You have now found an almost exact community that you feel comfortable with.
The ghettos and west both make sense when explained in this manner. The earlier seeking jobs and security by flocking to those of equal social temperment and ethnic background. The later for a fresh start at establishing entirely new communities where you can be someone different than you were before (who doesn't like a new beginning?). But in Suburbia, you still have that high difference in basically everything. You have 85% of America supposedly living in suburban fantasies, which means a high diversity. You are all middle class, though Tommy next door in reality makes 4x as much money as you do, and Jimmy across the street makes half of what you do; and what steams you is that you all live in essentially the same house. You can't stand your neighbors, or the stupid rules your neighborhood has (courtesy hours, watch times, "open door" policies, lawn/street upkeep...). So why would anyone stay there? The sense of community isn't made out of mutual interest or trust, or even necessity, but out of distrust of everywhere else and a disillusionment with other communities. Of course, in modern America nobody honestly trusts their neighbors (alright, statistically), we just politely put up with them, so it is fair to say that suburbanites don't even trust their immediate community. (This without any hard evidence is of course presumptiuous, but it's a blog, not a thesis.) So yet again, why is it that Suburban neighborhoods remain popularized?
3) Economics: Alright, this one continues a little on the social aspect. As said above, there is a high difference in how much people in one middle class neighborhood makes. This in of itself usually segregates people's living considerations so that they seek out a more comfortable community. Suburbia though is no stranger to borrowing a cup of sugar, as the phrase goes. The other oddity is that with a solid neighborhood like most suburban 'hoods are created, there is almost no way a local business can rise in their midst, or even a franchise for that matter. This meaning that you have to go place your money is a different community's coffers, even if it is across the street from the neighborhood, it isn't in your neighborhood technically. Even when considering who works, there, they can be from any number of communities, not just your own. So you are a benefit to people outside of your zone. Not good for the society at large, seeing as how most towns and cities rely on local businesses to survive and flourish. So, if you follow me, this means that Suburban structures choke the abilities of a community to reach its fullest fiscal potential.
4) Artistically: Alright, this is just a personal vendetta, but really, cookie cutter houses are an eye sore, and boring. I think it promotes the further idea of "be like your neighbor, because that's what you should want to be," killing creativity and opening your mind to the idea that you can escape to better pastures. Really, it just promotes that homogeny I discussed earlier, that being like everyone else is what is best, and while it sounds rather like 1984 I assure you that it isn't that bad. I just feel people should express themselves, and that everyone would healthier for it.
So if you still want to dream a fancy Suburban dream with a four bedroom, three car garage, then by all means, dream on. It may in fact be that lifestyle you have always sought, but me personally, I aim for more. I want to break that status quo of what is expected of me, and be damned if I will let silly things like lack of funds get in my way, all I really need is some guts to get it to happen.
This is a longer post and I realize this, but honestly, Suburbia disturbs me, greatly.
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